Dilip said:
Dennis,
It is a Toshiba. The Toshiba recovery CD will only do a clean
re-install of
XP Home. I want to avoid that since I do not want to reformat the HD.
There is data on the HD I want to save.
Thanks.
Dilip
This is the joy of only having a "Recovery CD". Borrow a real OEM XP CD
matching your version (probably Home) and boot with it to do the
repair. If no one you know has this, take the machine to a local
professional shop which will have what is needed.
Depending on the error you're getting, you might be able to just go into
Recovery Console and take care of things. Before you go through finding
a real OS disk, see if Toshiba installed the Recovery Console and has
that as an option. It might be on the same boot option menu as Safe
Mode, etc. (press F8 repeatedly at startup).
You can also retrieve your data from a working hard drive even if
Windows won't boot. You can either use a Bart's PE or Knoppix. Here is
information about using Knoppix:
An easy way to retrieve Windows files is to boot with Knoppix, a Linux
distro on a live cd. You will need a computer with two cd drives, one
of which is a cd/dvd-rw OR a usb thumb drive with enough capacity to
hold your data. To get Knoppix, you need a computer with a fast
Internet connection and third-party burning software. Download the
Knoppix .iso from
www.knoppix.net and create your bootable cd. Then
boot with it and it will be able to see the Windows files. If you are
using the usb thumb drive, right-click on its icon (on the Desktop) to
get its properties and uncheck the box that says "Read Only". Then
click on it to open it. Note that the default mouse action in the
window manager used by Knoppix (KDE) is a single click to open instead
of the traditional MS Windows' double-click. Otherwise, use the K3b
burning program to burn the files to cd/dvd-r's.
I would retrieve the data before doing anything else.
Malke
